Live UTI Free exists to help and support the community that we are building. It is extremely important to us that we foster a safe place for this community to learn more about urinary tract infections and to interact appropriately. These community guidelines aim to make that possible.
When you register to become an official Live UTI Free member through a monthly contribution (equivalent 5 USD minimum), you’ll receive exclusive invitations to community calls and webinars, as well as early access to research participation opportunities.
Guidelines for feedback sessions:
Format of feedback sessions:
Members will be notified of research participation opportunities via email. Emails will be sent to members at least one day prior to announcements made to the broader Live UTI Free community.
Research participation opportunities may include, but are not limited to:
Live UTI Free uses Donorbox for community funding contributions. You can read the Donorbox privacy policy for more information. Members may cancel their membership at any time by logging into their Donorbox account. When membership is canceled, the member will be removed from the membership mailing list and will receive no further emails regarding the membership benefits outlined above.
Comments are a great way to ask questions, pose theories and share useful information. We welcome you to express your views, and we love to hear from our community. We do have some community guidelines to help make comments useful for everyone. We also like to keep things courteous.
We encourage you to try to add value to the conversation around chronic UTI. Take a look at the previous comments before entering the discussion, then decide if you have something useful to contribute.
We get that this is a highly personal topic, so you don’t need to use your real name, but never impersonate another person. You are legally responsible for content you submit, and once it’s online, anyone can read it.
On that note, give some thought to how others may perceive your comment, before submitting it. Chronic UTI is experienced differently by each person, and it’s important your comment is not misunderstood.
Make clear what your connection to the story or research you’re sharing is. We’re all about transparency at Live UTI Free.
We provide a comments section on all our posts as we want to encourage our users to ask questions, share their stories and provide us with valuable feedback. We welcome friendly debate and respectful disagreement from people interested in chronic UTI and female health.
This means anyone can comment, but we ask that you stick to the rules contained in these community guidelines. We also ask that you do not duplicate your comments in multiple places across the site. This just dilutes conversations around important topics.
As a patient advocacy site, personal experience is what drives us. We want to hear your stories, and we want to know all about your progress. What we are not ok with, is users of our site providing recommendations to other users, based on their personal treatment experience. This applies to specific products, as well as practitioners, whether the review is positive or negative.
There is no single remedy or treatment that will work for every person who suffers from chronic UTI. And each person has an individual experience with any practitioner. This means, it is inappropriate for one person to recommend particular remedies and/or medications, or practitioners to another. These types of comments will be removed.
Instead, if you have great information to share about a particular treatment or chronic UTI practitioner, get in touch with us! That way, we can do the necessary research, and if it’s appropriate, share the information on our website.
When you post a comment on Live UTI Free, you agree that the information you have shared is true and correct to the best of your knowledge. If your contribution is not based on your own personal experience, we ask that you include sources (references, links) so others can do their own research.
If you believe a comment posted by another user is factually incorrect, be nice, and share your own references to the contrary. New research is released all the time, and we could all use a hand keeping up!
In short, we welcome your input, and we request that you express your views while supporting them with evidence where relevant.
This is about respect. Live UTI Free is at the center of a community with vastly varied experiences. We will not tolerate libel or abuse.
Be respectful of others and refrain from comments that are patronizing, shaming or insulting; threatening; obscene; offensive in any way or discriminatory against any specific group.
This includes comments that make unwarranted assumptions or derogatory comments about a person’s commitment to getting well, their overall health, diet or lifestyle choices. User posts promoting or insinuating self-harm will not be published.
It’s extremely important to us that sufferers of chronic UTI feel that Live UTI Free is a safe place to learn more about the science behind these conditions, and to ask questions without retaliation.
If it appears you have deliberately joined a discussion for the sole purpose of posting upsetting comments (trolling), your comment will be deleted.
Content or usernames that are considered unsuitable for general viewing are not acceptable.
If you see a comment that breaks these rules, please don’t respond. Report it to us instead. We will remove any posts that violate these rules, which means any responses will also be deleted.
As we mentioned above, Live UTI Free is about evidence based approaches, and we firmly believe that no single treatment approach will be successful for every individual with chronic UTI.
We may seem as though we’re harping on about this, but we think it’s crucial. While we encourage our users to share their personal stories and experiences, we do not allow comments that recommend specific remedies or treatments in a way that directly suggests other users should try them.
This also applies to practitioners and researchers. Should you be a medical professional or researcher who would like to share relevant information, please make your professional status known at the time of posting. We warmly welcome input from the medical and scientific communities, and request your submissions adhere to our ‘no specific recommendations’ rule.
The information on Live UTI Free is not intended to replace the relationship between a patient and their practitioner. It’s always best to seek the advice of a qualified health professional regarding any information found on our site, or in the comments.
We have limited the length of comments to 800 characters. Use them wisely.
800 characters should be quite enough to keep a discussion going. If you have more detailed information you would like to share, get in touch with us directly, we’d love to hear from you.
Please do not sell or promote products or services via comments on our site. If you have a product or service you believe would be beneficial to our readers, get in touch with us first.
Please do not imply an association with or endorsement by Live UTI Free without prior written consent. Further, in no way can you utilize our name when promoting your product. Even something like “based on information from staging.liveutifree.com” is not acceptable.
We do not endorse individual products, or organisations, unless previously agreed to in writing. This is crucial to maintain the sense of trust and transparency within our community. We do build collaborative relationships with organisations where it benefits our audience. If you would like to discuss this with us, please see our funding policy.
All spam or promotional comments will be removed, or not published in the first place. This includes:
This one is simple. If you didn’t write it, haven’t properly referenced it, or do not have permission to publish it, don’t post it. It is perfectly fine for you to summarize another person’s work in your own words, for the purpose of the discussion.
It is unlawful to reproduce content published by Live UTI Free without proper reference. We welcome links back to our site, when used in an appropriate context. We go into more detail on this in our legals page.
Do not violate someone else’s privacy. Please do not post personal and/or contact information about yourself – remember this is a public arena. Don’t post anyone else’s personal details or contact information, including contact information for practitioners. If you have something to share, get in touch with us.
All comments on Live UTI Free are moderated to ensure they comply with the community guidelines set out here.
User comments that are not in the spirit of these community guidelines will be removed.
If your comment does not immediately appear on the site after submission, it is likely our small team has not yet reviewed and approved it. This generally happens within 24 hours.
If your comment does not appear after this timeframe it is possible it has been flagged as a violation to these community guidelines. Where possible, we will reach out to you if this is the case. We also encourage you to reach out to us if you have a question about your comment.
Should you feel a comment that has been published is inappropriate, you can flag it using our contact form. If we agree with you, we will remove the comment, and where possible, contact the user that posted it.
We do not edit comments. This means that even if a single word in the comment is in violation of these community guidelines, the entire comment will be removed. We also won’t fix spelling or grammatical errors.
If you see anything on our site that you think is incorrect or incomplete, please reach out to us. If you feel a comment by another user is inappropriate, please let us know.
Whether it’s good or bad, we want to hear it, and the best way to get in touch is via our contact form.
Particularly if you have something negative to say, we prefer you tell us directly, as this is the most effective way for us to address it.
If you have a suggestion for our website, or would like to share new research, it’s also best to contact us directly. We promise, our contact form is a direct line of communication with our email inbox, and we will respond.
All the above community guidelines apply to interactions and comments on our social media accounts, with the following additions.
We retain the right to block, unfollow and/or report accounts that we feel are in violation of these community guidelines.
We carefully create our social media content with our community in mind. Please don’t repurpose our content in ways that are in conflict to these community guidelines. If you have any doubts, just reach out to us.
If we send you a private or direct message and you feel it is something you would like to share publicly, please seek written permission before doing so.
If you share our content with your audience to help raise awareness, we greatly appreciate it, and we ask that you credit Live UTI Free appropriately.
Lastly, do not make misleading associations, nor imply that Live UTI Free endorses your product or service. We provide information so our users can make their own decisions, and misleading associations can be harmful to this decision making process.